In a hangar at an airfield 24 miles south east of Moscow, technicians were yesterday checking over the latest additions to the burgeoning military arsenal which a resurgent Russia hopes can restore its status as a major world power.

The MiG-35 and MiG-29 fighters which Russia plans to showcase at this week's -Moscow international air show are just a small part of a £100 billion plan to return the Russian military to the heights of its Cold War might.

On Friday President Vladimir Putin caused consternation by announcing the resumption of regular, long-range nuclear bomber patrols, but there is more to come; Russia is planning to double combat aircraft production by 2025 with more nuclear missiles, aircraft carriers and tanks at the top of Moscow's shopping list.

The message to the West is clear: the days of being able to dismiss Russia as a spent force are over. Bolstered by the cash from sales of oil and gas and President Putin's steely determination to re-establish the country on the world stage, the Russian -military machine is back in business.

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Various theories have been put forward for the dramatic military expansion, not least the need to appeal to nationalists in the run-up to forthcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. The real reason, however, appears to be that Russia has taken offence at what it regards as the West's insulting indifference to its very existence.

Intelligence sources say Washington and London have been taken aback by just how seriously Russia has viewed the perceived slight and admit that in concentrating so heavily on Iraq and al-Qaeda, they took their eyes off the ball.

"They were slow to see that these people are still players," said a former White House staffer, who served both Ronald Reagan and George Bush. "My great fear is that I wake up one day soon to discover that we lost the Cold War, or rather that like everything else, we won the war and then lost the peace."

A source close to the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, who cut her teeth in government as a Kremlinologist in the Eighties, said that Middle East issues had diverted her attention from a more rigorous engagement with Moscow.

"She wants to spend more time on Russia but that hasn't always been possible. She said to me that she regrets the fact that she has not done enough on what is, after all, her major area of expertise."

The carefully-staged pictures of the president stripped to the waist and striking various manly poses on holiday in Siberia last week are not the only Russian muscle-flexing that has been going on in recent months.

While Russia's submariners have managed to upset even the mild-mannered Norwegians and Canadians by planting a flag under the Arctic ice, its long range TU-95 Bear bombers have rattled America's cage by buzzing its US naval base on the island of Guam in the western Pacific. The Georgians are furious after a Russian missile landed on the outskirts of a village near Tbilisi and a series of war games in Russia's southern Ural Mountains featuring some 6,500 troops from Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan sparked Western concern over the emergence of a new Warsaw Pact.

The alarm may have sounded too late, however, according to Matthew Clements, Eurasia editor of Jane's Country Risk. "I think what has not been seen is the way Russia perceives itself as a new, great power, and how it feels it has not been taken as seriously as it should be," he said.

The latest developments have exacerbated an already tense situation. Russia has responded angrily to US plans to station an anti-missile system in the Czech republic and Poland by threatening to site its own missiles in Kaliningrad to counter the threat. Earlier this summer Mr Putin upped the ante by threatening to target US strategic nuclear sites in Europe. Tensions with Britain over the murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko have prompted tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats, while on Friday the BBC's World Service was thrown off Russian FM radio.

The Foreign Office last week refused to be drawn on its attitude towards Russia's newly-assertive attitude, other than to observe that "we are not alarmed".

But perhaps the only positive that Britain can draw from Russia's military resurgence is that its new Typhoon fighter aircraft, purchased at about £20 billion to counter a Cold War threat, might finally have found a worthy adversary.

Eight years ago, when -President Putin first came to power, the Russian military was in meltdown. The Russian army was crippled by low morale, the navy was rusting away and the air force was at half its Cold War strength.

But no longer. Russian defence spending rose by 22 per cent and 27 per cent in the past two years and could be up as much as 30 per cent this year. In February, Sergei Ivanov, then defence secretary and now one of the front-runners to replace Mr Putin next year, announced a £100 billion programme of expenditure. According to Jane's Sentinel Country Risk Assessments, the Russian shopping list includes two new submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missiles, the Bulava and the Sineva, both with a 5,000 mile range and capable of carrying 10 nuclear warheads, and a new anti-aircraft missile, the S-400, which the Russian ministry of defence claims is effective against incoming missiles.

It also plans to spend heavily on the new TU-160 strategic bomber, which can launch cruise missiles, the SU-34 "Fullback" fighter-bomber capable of all-weather attacks on heavily defended targets and a new fifth-generation fighter, the Sukhoi T-50, which is expected to come into service in 2008 as Russia's main lightweight front-line fighter. The expanded Russian fleet will include six new nuclear powered aircraft carriers, it has just one at present, and eight ballistic missile submarines. Alex Pravda, a Russia expert at London's Chatham House foreign policy think tank, said the new aggressive approach was typical Putin.

"He believes in fighting for your place in the sun and has said that nobody appreciates weakness. They are not looking for the imperial reach of the Soviet era. What they want is an international presence."

But with Mr Putin unable to stand for a third term, his former defence secretary Sergei Ivanov is well-placed to benefit from domestic approval of the tough new stance when Russians go to the polls next March.

Whoever succeeds Mr Putin, the West is likely to have to accept that the balance of power has changed. As Mr Putin said when he announced the resumption of strategic bomber patrols: "Combat duty has begun."